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Now that I know my decision, I'll report on the interview I had for my LBS Round 1 application.

My interview seems to have been different than every other LBS interview report I read. Going in, I was very prepared to speak about my background, my leadership experiences and why I wanted to go to LBS, but he threw me off with questions to test my business knowledge and knowledge about the world. He asked me two questions about me: why MBA/why LBS and what type of int'l work experience I have. After that, my interviewer asked me a bunch of other questions, including:

What is the current price of oil?What was the DOW at today?Where do you get your news? What do you think of the future of the publishing industry?Do you think the price of gold will go up? Why?What do you think the future of Syria will look like?What is the fiscal cliff?What happened in China last week?Who's the prime minister of Britain?

This went on for about 45 minutes. Then he also gave me a consulting case study:

How many quarters would it take to fill up our room and would that be taller than the future World Trade Center if you stacked them all up?

My presentation, I think went ok. It was about whether companies need to have integrity with their consumers.

I felt flustered and don't think I really talked about myself that much. He did say at certain points that he just wanted to see how I think and it was ok that I didn't know answers to some of his questions, so that comforted me a little.

But I'm guessing my performance in the interview played a large part in my ding notice today.

I'm really bummed about the ding. It will take me a while to get over this.

Last edited by Ward2012 on 17 Dec 2012, 10:48, edited 1 time in total.

Does anyone know how open LBS would be to deferring the initial deposit payment until the 2nd round deadline? Or are they pretty strict against things like that?

Not sure about LBS specifically, but in general business schools are very reluctant to this. The reason is that they will admit R2 candidates based on who they already have for sure from R1. They like to have a diverse class in every sense. Anyway, asking will not hurt!

Now that I know my decision, I'll report on the interview I had for my LBS Round 1 application.

My interview seems to have been different than every other LBS interview report I read. Going in, I was very prepared to speak about my background, my leadership experiences and why I wanted to go to LBS, but he threw me off with questions to test my business knowledge and knowledge about the world. He asked me two questions about me: why MBA/why LBS and what type of int'l work experience I have. After that, my interviewer asked me a bunch of other questions, including:

What is the current price of oil?What was the DOW at today?Where do you get your news? What do you think of the future of the publishing industry?Do you think the price of gold will go up?What do you think the future of Syria will look like?What is the fiscal cliff?What happened in China last week?Who's the prime minister of Britain?

This went on for about 45 minutes. Then he also gave me a consulting case study:

How many quarters would it take to fill up our room and would that be taller than the future World Trade Center if you stacked them all up?

My presentation, I think went ok. It was about whether companies need to have integrity with their consumers.

I felt flustered and don't think I really talked about myself that much. He did say at certain points that he just wanted to see how I think and it was ok that I didn't know answers to some of his questions, so that comforted me a little.

But I'm guessing my performance in the interview played a large part in my ding notice today.

I'm really bummed about the ding. It will take me a while to get over this.

Ward - I'm so sorry to hear this. There's no other response that I can think of other than: that totally sucks!

I'm not sure what I would do in your case, but I wonder if calling the admissions office and approach the discussion more about what you could have done differently (ie: feedback). If they mention the interview as the dagger in your application, you could then bring up this experience to them (politely). If they have other elements (work experience, recommendations, GMAT), then you can potentially rest a bit easier knowing that it wasn't this one horrible interview. Although, the outcome still sucks.

It's a fine line - I'd think long and hard about if I wanted to do that or not - but since LBS really prides themselves on training their alumni interviewers, it's just shocking that your experience was completely different from everyone else's.

Best of luck to you at other schools. I'm sure you'll be fantastic wherever you go, but I know that doesn't take the sting out of the LBS ding.

Now that I know my decision, I'll report on the interview I had for my LBS Round 1 application.

My interview seems to have been different than every other LBS interview report I read. Going in, I was very prepared to speak about my background, my leadership experiences and why I wanted to go to LBS, but he threw me off with questions to test my business knowledge and knowledge about the world. He asked me two questions about me: why MBA/why LBS and what type of int'l work experience I have. After that, my interviewer asked me a bunch of other questions, including:

What is the current price of oil?What was the DOW at today?Where do you get your news? What do you think of the future of the publishing industry?Do you think the price of gold will go up?What do you think the future of Syria will look like?What is the fiscal cliff?What happened in China last week?Who's the prime minister of Britain?

This went on for about 45 minutes. Then he also gave me a consulting case study:

How many quarters would it take to fill up our room and would that be taller than the future World Trade Center if you stacked them all up?

My presentation, I think went ok. It was about whether companies need to have integrity with their consumers.

I felt flustered and don't think I really talked about myself that much. He did say at certain points that he just wanted to see how I think and it was ok that I didn't know answers to some of his questions, so that comforted me a little.

But I'm guessing my performance in the interview played a large part in my ding notice today.

I'm really bummed about the ding. It will take me a while to get over this.

Ward - I'm so sorry to hear this. There's no other response that I can think of other than: that totally sucks!

I'm not sure what I would do in your case, but I wonder if calling the admissions office and approach the discussion more about what you could have done differently (ie: feedback). If they mention the interview as the dagger in your application, you could then bring up this experience to them (politely). If they have other elements (work experience, recommendations, GMAT), then you can potentially rest a bit easier knowing that it wasn't this one horrible interview. Although, the outcome still sucks.

It's a fine line - I'd think long and hard about if I wanted to do that or not - but since LBS really prides themselves on training their alumni interviewers, it's just shocking that your experience was completely different from everyone else's.

Best of luck to you at other schools. I'm sure you'll be fantastic wherever you go, but I know that doesn't take the sting out of the LBS ding.

I had a similarly poor interview experience with an alum. The interview lasted less than an hour and the interviewer could not contain his disinterest in my answers nor his discontent with the role he landed post-LBS. I'm very disappointed but it was a learning experience, to say the least.

Well in my case, I was admitted at Booth and LBS. It is a tough decision to make. Both of them are great schools.

My post career objectives are to work in London / Europe / Middle East so I tend to think that LBS is the better choice. But Booth has a such strong momentum in its history and the better brand internationally (?).

I feel that at any of the top MBA schools, US and abroad, you'll get a solid education and great job coming out of it as long as you put the effort in. That being said, a big part of the MBA will be the experience we all get. Living in London and having the opportunity to travel Europe will be hard to pass up - I feel like I'm going to get a lot out of the experience outside of the MBA experience as well living in London.

Too many factors to consider! Granted, we should be all happy we're in the position to have to make such a difficult decision.